


Gifted and Talented

by Chiomi



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, Hawk Moth is Gabriel Agreste, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-08-18 20:03:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8174260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiomi/pseuds/Chiomi
Summary: College Francoise Dupont is academically competitive and offers unrivaled enrichment. All of the students who attend it were remarkable even before someone dosed them all with magic.





	1. Legendary

**Author's Note:**

> The only good info I can find on French GAT programs is behind a paywall, in academic French (I read at like a 5th grade level), or on sites with terrible layouts. I am making this shit up as I go along. It's gonna be hella nerdy, but it shouldn't be inaccessible, so please let me know if something needs more explanation. Also please feel free to suggest Things: there's a very loose overarching plot, with lots of room for us all to be nerds along the way. Current plans include The Prisoner’s Dilemma, the Doppler effect, and far, far too many references to song lyrics. Rating and tags subject to change - I’ll warn in the notes if/when they do. Ships are not going to be tagged unless they end up foregrounded, but a complete list of background ships can be found here: http://uswe.tumblr.com/post/151490334942/ Obviously, contains spoilers.
> 
> Updates will be whenever, at no set length.

College Francoise Dupont took only the best and brightest. It took them and moulded them to be even more focused, but the first day of school still always carried an air of excitement and an undercurrent of romantic potential. Even Chloe was excited - she’d sent out a mass text on Sunday that ‘her Adrikins’ was finally coming to public school. Marinette arrived to the first day of school amidst blazing sunlight and the loud buzz of the warning bell. The courtyard was already deserted, everyone wanting to be in the smaller groups that classes represented. She slid into the classroom exactly on time and was greeted by the sight of two of her classmates, obviously in pain.

“Oh, no! Did I miss it?”

Rose clasped her hands together under her chin. “Right as soon as Nino walked in the door. It was so romantic.”

Marinette smiled, clapped Nino on the back, and extended a hand to the new girl. “Hi! I’m Marinette. We don’t mean to be insensitive, it’s just really exciting to watch someone meet their soulmate. Do you want an ibuprofen for until your eyes settle?”

“Uh - I’m Alya. And yes, please.” The new girl smiled weakly. The abrupt, magic-induced shift in vision was supposed to be both painful and disorienting for the first couple of hours.

Marinette set down her backpack on the desk and got out her ibuprofen and water bottle, passing both to Alya. Alya took them gratefully and swallowed one of the pills, then passed them to Nino, a faint blush rising in her cheeks.

Mme. Bustier bustled in, and class got started. It was mostly going over expectations for the year, which meant Alya wasn’t interrupting anything vital when, a few minutes later, she burst out, “Oh! Blue! It’s blue, right?”

Nino turned around, and both of them blushed and smiled at each other while Chloe scoffed. “Of course it’s blue. And it clashes horribly with his hat.”

“Class,” Mme. Bustier snapped, nipping the confrontation in the bud.

Alya leaned over and whispered, “What’s her problem?”

It was an unkindly long list with only one currently-relevant answer. “She’s always been able to see color,” Marinette whispered back.

Alya gasped, quickly muffling the sound with her hands. “Oh no, that’s horrible.”

Marinette glanced quickly over at Chloe, who was staring straight forward, paying far more attention to Mme. Bustier than usual. Marinette shrugged awkwardly, trying to indicate that they should put the conversation off. She wasn’t any kind of fan of Chloe’s, but didn’t want to be cruel.

Alya grasped the hint and went quiet.

-

Following the advice of a flying, talking bug-mouse did not seem like the best route to success, but Tikki said Marinette was needed, so she went out after Ivan.

Crashing headfirst into the cobbles after assaulting her new partner did not seem like an auspicious start.

-

Even less auspicious was the fact that the first color she saw was the purple of the fleeing butterfly.

She hadn’t even notice the headache start - wouldn’t have, not after she’d hit the street. The only new people around - the only ones she hadn’t met before - were Chat Noir and whatever malevolent entity had sent the butterfly. So it was probably - it had to be Chat Noir. But he was going to be her crime-fighting partner, which wasn’t romantic. She’d always hoped that her soulmate would be romantic, that they would be like her parents. Instead she had a teammate for saving the city, one whose name and face she could never know for both of their safety..

It was petty and small and selfish and unkind to resent that. She’d been given yet another gift she hadn’t asked for; she should be grateful for all of them.

At least she would see color now.


	2. Black Out Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _If I could paint the sky, would all the stars be shining bloody red?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by everyone’s favorite histrionic wizard. Tbh I have more sympathy for the hair meltdown.

“The truth can be a weapon,” Alya said. “Like - it’s so cool that we have heroes? And I want all up in that. But it might put them in danger, what with a supervillain running around. Where it’d be really useful as a weapon is in bringing down Hawk Moth.”

Adrien was only eavesdropping because he had to be sure. Like, okay, he would probably listen to anything about his superhero persona on principle, but if anyone knew who Ladybug was, it would be Alya, and that’s what he wanted to know. It hadn’t taken long to figure out that Alya was soulmates with Nino, since it had still been fresh gossip when he started on the second day of school. Figuring out that Ivan was soulmates with Mylene took longer, but their dual meltdown at the discussion of asexuality in health class and subsequent hand-holding had answered that. Which Adrien was kind of glad of - he hadn’t thought that Ivan was really his type, and besides, being soulmates with Ladybug was  _ awesome _ . Now he just had to figure out who she was as a civilian and ask her out as a civilian. With as opposed as Ladybug was to revealing their identities or hanging out for fun while they were in costume, it was the only way. Yeah, she might be mad when she eventually found out, but hopefully it would be far enough in the future that being mad didn’t mean she would go away. At least five years after he found her and asked her out.

That plan had been one of his central tenets over the past few months, as public school would have proved an unexpectedly big drain on his time even without the added superhero duties. He needed something to come back to that would give him hope. He also needed someone else to do some of the footwork: ergo, following the Ladyblog closely and listening in on Alya’s conversations.

“Yeah,” said Marinette behind him. “Do you have any clues as to who Hawk Moth is?”

“Nah, girl. I haven’t even caught sight of him, just those butterflies. I’ve tried to track them after Ladybug cleanses them, but they always fly really high, completely out of sight.”

Adrien’s own snooping for Hawk Moth’s identity hadn’t been any more fruitful: some of his and Ladybug’s earliest patrols had focused on using his kwami-enhanced sense of smell to try and track the butterflies, but millions of people and their cars made any one scent hard to track. It hadn’t even worked trying to track down Ladybug, and she was a much larger target than a butterfly, with a much more distinct scent. He sighed, trying to drag his attention back to the lesson. If he didn’t take good notes now, he’d be lost on the quiz, and any score shy of perfect endangered his continued attendance.

He noticed that Mme. Mendeleiev was glaring at their section, clearly having noticed that Alya and Marinette were talking rather than paying attention to - the properties of different sections of the periodic table. Adrien raised his hand. Her gaze snapped to him. “Yes?”

“Madame, since any elements over 118 will necessarily exist only in a lab, and are likely to be super unstable, do you think we’ll ever be able to conclusively state that they exist at all?”

Mme. Mendeleiev’s face relaxed into something like a smile, and she paced back to the board to draw extrapolative lines. “What an excellent question. It’s the underlying assumption I’m going to answer, though - yes, we can expect there to be a lot of instability with the higher numbers, but there’s a hypothesized island of stability with the higher atomic numbers. Unbinilium, which hasn’t been successfully synthesized yet, might be part of this island of stability. We can already expect it to be an alkaline earth metal, because one can extrapolate a lot of information about an unknown element from its grouping. Which is why your homework is to write a summary of each group.”

There were no groans: they were resigned to her assignments by now, and to her policy of doubling any homework people complained about. They were filtering into the hall to head back to Mme. Bustier’s classroom when the lights went out - including all hints of light from outside.

A number of illicit cell phones lit up. “It’s weird that there’s no screaming,” Rose said, her face eerily underlit by the flashlight on her phone.

The glow of Alya’s phone was augmented by the pale blue glow around the USB port of her charging stick. “I mean, we’re used to it by now. I’m guessing no one’s actively getting attacked yet. My twitter’s blowing up, though, so I’m going to head out.”

“I’ll text you if a teacher wants to do a headcount,” Rose said.

“I think they’ve given up,” Alix said from where she’d sat on the floor against the wall. “The new safety guidelines the police sent out are all about sheltering in place rather than getting somewhere safe.”

Chloe appeared next to Adrien and latched on to his arm like a barnacle. “I just hate being in the dark, don’t you?”

She’d been playacting whatever seemed most appropriate for the situation long enough that she’d apparently forgotten that Adrien had been the one scared of the dark as a kid and she’d been the one mocking him for it. Adrien extracted himself carefully. “I need to go to the locker room and grab my phone to let my dad know I’m okay.”

He slipped away before anyone else could stop him. It was hard to navigate in the dark - he could see as Chat, probably, but he couldn’t see if he was alone enough to transform. He made his way to the stairs and went up: people would look for Adrien down, and Chat Noir could leave from the windows. He stopped on the landing and listened hard. Still no screaming, even in the distance. Sirens. Nothing close by. Nothing to indicate that there was someone close enough to see who he was.

“We’re good, kid,” Plagg said impatiently. “We need to go. I haven’t seen an akuma like this before.”

“Right. Plagg, claws out.”

Even as Chat Noir, the city was dark: no sun, no moon, no stars, and the power appeared to be out all over the city. The dim reds and oranges of emergency systems were coming slowly to life, but it was only his night vision that allowed anything to be really navigable. He unlatched the window in the stairwell and vaulted out the top of it, extending his baton in midair. From the sky there was still no sign of any kind of point of origin, so he stopped on a suitably anonymous roof a couple blocks from school and tried to contact Ladybug.

She picked up almost immediately. “Oh, Chat, good. How close are you to the Latin Quarter?”

“I can be there in a few minutes. You found the akuma?”

“No, but I found a roiling mass of darkness that’s seeping even blacker shadow onto the sidewalk. Pretty sure they’ll be somewhere in there.”

“Perfect,” he said, and hung up. Racing across the rooftops felt familiar in a way it shouldn’t for 10 in the morning. It was darker than a usual Paris midnight, though. The City of Lights should never be this dark.

Even in the dark, though, the red of Ladybug’s suit caught his eye like a homing beacon. That might just be her, though. There was more noise here, commotion on the street level, but she turned towards him as soon as he landed. Her eyes couldn’t quite focus on his face. “How much can you see, my Lady?”

“Not much,” she said grimly, hand coming to rest on his arm like he’d be able to transfer his night vision by osmosis.

He was never going to discourage any kind of touching, even if it wouldn’t work. “Okay, I’ll be your eyes.” He peered down into the street, and there was some panic going on, but it looked like people were mostly clutching at each other and trying to stumble away. A man stumbled on the cobbles and let out a short, sharp cry. Shadows seemed to detach themselves from the ground to wrap around him, and he fell slowly to lying flat on the ground as if he were under a great weight.

No wonder there wasn’t much screaming. Adrien swallowed, throat suddenly so dry it clicked. How were they supposed to avoid getting touched by darkness? “Right,” he said, trying to keep his voice businesslike. “It looks like noise spikes attract the akuma’s attention, and they’re probably in the bistro across the street and over one.”

Ladybug frowned, and he let her think while he tried to see through the gloom to spot the akuma itself. They’d have to go in blind, Ladybug even more than him. “I can’t tell anything useful without more information. We should go in - from either side of the doorway.”

“Can do,” he said, uncomfortably aware that she wouldn’t see a nod of agreement - or anything else. “I’ll go right.”

They both dove into the darkness, and his heart tripped again at her fearlessness. He knew how dark it had been as a civilian, and she was flying out over a fathomless void about which all she knew was that it held monsters. He landed lightly next to the glass door to the bistro and peered in. The darkness was coiling near the ground like low-lying fog. It was hard to pinpoint anything, but it seemed to be emanating from one of the booths. “Three meters in from the door, on the left. It doesn’t look like they’re doing anything but oozing darkness, though.”

She nodded and took a deep breath. “Let’s try talking first. This isn’t going normally.”

“I follow your lead,” he said, and followed her into the dark. It was deep enough that even he had a hard time making anything out, with a palpable aspect that made it all worse. He could understand why the man in the street had just laid down and given up, because it was like having pure despair lick at his legs.

“Hello?” Ladybug’s voice wasn’t at all tremulous, was warm and friendly and curious in a way that utterly justified her public profile eclipsing his.

A voice like mud seeped through the darkness. “She left me.”

“That’s . . . terrible.”

He touched her back, a wordless gesture of support. She could talk him down, if she wanted. He’d be her backup if it didn’t work.

“Hawk Moth wants me to take your Miraculous, but I just don’t care.” There was a sniffle in the dark, and the darkness responded. “She was my light, but just because I didn’t make her see colors, she left me here in the dark. In the dark there isn’t any color, right? So everyone should just be in darkness, where they can fall in love with who they want.”

Adrien pitied him, kind of - he had to have been in a very bad place about the breakup to get akumatized. But still, everyone got dumped, and everyone had soulmate issues. It was a ridiculous, petty reason to plunge the city into darkness.

“There can still be light in the world,” Ladybug said quietly.

“No,” the akuma said, on a long, low moan.

“I know it doesn’t feel like it,” she said, unbearably gentle. She edged forward. “Look, what do I call you?”

“Lightless,” they said.

“Okay, Lightless,” she said. “It sounds like you really love her.”

“I do,” they said, and Adrien thought the voice might be male. It was hard to tell with the acoustic shift brought on by the transformation they’d undergone.

Ladybug took another step forward, just out of Adrien’s range. He didn’t want to move himself in case he spooked the akuma, but he didn’t like being this far from protecting her back when she was being so ostentatiously noncombative.

“Lightless,” she said. “Don’t you want her to be happy?”

“Not with anyone else,” he said, and the darkness took on malice.

“I know what makes me happy,” Ladybug said, voice sweet as honey and just as placid. “I love feeling the sun on my face and looking at flowers and sketching in my sketchbook. It doesn’t have to involve another person.” Her voice dropped conspiratorially. “I know I’d be more open to going back to someone if I was already pretty happy with my life.”

The darkness lightened: Adrien could see the mirror over the bar in his peripheral vision, and it now reflected what could just pass for a very dark night.

“You think she’d come back to me?”

“I don’t think that’s something she’d even consider while you’re holding the city hostage,” she said firmly.

“I just wanted everyone to feel as bad as I did,” he said, voice sounding more human.

It was kind of worrying: an akuma took hold firmly enough to drive people to the kind of criminal acts they would never do, and they were always controlled by Hawk Moth. As if on cue, the outline of a butterfly glowed purple around the akuma’s face. The young man’s face twisted from misery into blank rage, and the darkness deepened once again.

“And they will. Starting when I snuff out the lights of your Miraculous.”

“My Lady,” Chat said, half warning and half affirmation that he was ready for whatever she needed next.

She sighed. “Lucky Charm!”

The light was blinding. It didn’t fade, either, but coalesced into a lit, spotted Maglite aimed right at Lightless’ face. “The scarf, please, Chat.”

He swiped it before Lightless was done hissing in pain and trying to cover his eyes, and had it shredded before Lightless could dive after it. Ladybug set the Maglite on the table to capture the akuma and cleanse it.

When the darkness cleared away, the three of them were left blinking. Lightless, now a confused and miserable university student, stared at them like he had no idea what had happened. “Lady - oh no!”

He burst into tears, and Adrien patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. “Uh, you’ll be fine, dude. Ladybug, your Miraculous -”

She nodded. “Yeah, and I have class. Later?”

“Whenever you need me, my Lady.”

She smiled at him, and she was like his own personal sun. He would bask in her glow whenever he could. He, too, had class to get back to, though.


	3. Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Well you may be king for the moment_   
>  _But I am a queen understand_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is pacing? What are update schedules? idk, but thank you for joining me on the ride.  
> I love, love, love comments but don't always reply because I am a deeply awkward person and I figure you'd rather I spend the time I'd spend agonizing over a reply writing more actual fiction.

The fact that they hadn’t recently been attacked by any of their classmates was due to a dearth of previously unvictimized classmates rather than any decline in the frequency of Chloe’s broad-spectrum harassment. This late in the spring, Alya was enough accustomed to Chloe’s modus operandi to be able to suspect what would happen when she spotted one of the younger teachers putting up a poster for a philosophy club.

Sure enough, Chloe turned to Sabrina and sniffed loudly, only a few feet from the teacher. “Wow, who thought we needed a philosophy club here? Teenagers _totally_  need to be given a venue to paint each other’s nails Nihilism Black.”

The teacher just rolled his eyes and taped down the bottom of the poster. “If you’d like to stop by, girls, you might enjoy the discussion.”

Chloe sneered. “Not likely. I get more than enough dead men asking silly questions because they don’t have anything real to engage with in history class. I don’t even know why they have you here - we’re supposed to be learning how to _think_ , not parrot guys who’ve been considered wrong almost as long as they’ve been dead.”

The teacher’s smile faded, and Alya got out her phone for the inevitable escalation. There was no point recording Chloe’s harassment: it’d only get Alya in trouble for recording without permission. But she could cover the akuma. A text from Nino interrupted her, and she took a moment to warn him off.

Firing off emoji conversations took hardly any time at all, but by the time Alya looked up the teacher was already walking away with the stiff gait she’d learned to recognize as what happened when someone refused to run while running away.

“Hey, Chloe,” she said, raising her voice a bit to carry to more people in the courtyard. “Is Hawk Moth paying you yet?”

Chloe tossed her ponytail and looked scathingly at Alya. “Stay away from me, loser.”

*

Ladybug woke up tied to a chair in a cell inside the gym, her head throbbing. She knew she was still in costume even before she opened her eyes because haptic feedback from her hands was slightly dulled. She could feel zip ties pressed against her wrist, but they weren’t digging in. How had she gotten here? She’d been on her way to school when she’d gotten an alert about a livestream from Alya.

An akuma. Right, obviously, just like obviously she’d been hit in the head. By an anvil? That was what her memory was telling her, but that didn’t make any sense. Of course, things with akuma rarely made sense, like why she was in a tiny jail cell inside the school gym. She could see another structure through the window, about the same size as hers, and the basketball hoop above it. Presumably Chat Noir was in there. Her view of the other cell was partially eclipsed as a man stepped forward to stare at her.

“Ah, Ladybug. You’re awake. I’ll pre-empt any escape attempts by telling you this is the Platonic ideal of a cell, translated directly from the Form into physical form.”

Translated into physical form like the anvil had been, only the anvil was like five feet above her head when it happened. What a ridiculously cartoonish way to be knocked unconscious. Ladybug opened her eyes to glare at the latest akuma victim. “Let me go,” she said.

“I am the Philosopher, and I have conditions for your release. Tell me who Chat Noir is behind the mask and I’ll let you go. If you don’t, well, I guess you’re both just staying here until you detransform.”

“What even is the point of that?”

The Philosopher frowned. “It should be obvious. You don’t hand over your Miraculous on demand, so if I know your secret identity I can get your mom or your girlfriend and threaten her until you hand it over.” He sniffed and squared his shoulders. “You should know,” he said ominously, “Chat Noir is getting the same offer right now.”

Ladybug was very still in her anger for a moment, then her eyes widened. “Oh my God, it’s a Prisoner’s Dilemma!” They’d been fighting akuma victims for almost a year, and this was the first one to fill her with unmitigated glee. It was enough to drive off her headache.

The Philosopher smiled slowly. “Indeed it is. So you know what you have to do, Ladybug.”

The laugh she loosed wasn’t a giggle or a snicker or a chortle. Ladybug cackled wildly, head falling back. The Philosopher shifted his weight from foot to foot. When Ladybug finished laughing, there were tears in her eyes, and the Philosopher looked deeply uncomfortable. “Hey nitwit, the Prisoner’s Dilemma doesn’t work here.”

He frowned ferociously and crossed his arms in front of his chest. She still hadn’t figured out where the akuma was: normally there was something that stood out, but this villain was wearing plain unrelieved black. “No, you’re in the same gang and you’re rational actors, like in the original thought experiment.”

“Oh, no,” Ladybug said, as obnoxiously condescending as possible. “The whole rational actor thing completely ignores loyalty. Humans aren’t rational actors ever, but we don’t even have to pretend to be when we’re partners, not just in the same gang. When you can trust your partner, the Prisoner’s Dilemma goes from thought experiment to more transparently solved game than Tic-Tac-Toe.”

“This is not a game,” he said quietly. A muscle at the edge of his jaw ticced. “I am Hawk Moth’s final solution, and you _will_  eventually relinquish your Miraculous.”

“No,” Ladybug said, and snickered. They hadn’t covered the Prisoner’s Dilemma in school, but Alya’s weakness for vigilantes extended to making Marinette watch American television with her. Marinette hadn’t see all of _Leverage_ , but she’d seen the Prisoner’s Dilemma episode and read about it and she and Alya had complained about it. Trust negated the whole thing - if not in your partner’s loyalty to you then trust in smart problem-solving. And it was just so obvious, at least to her and Alya. Of course it would be to Chat, too, if he’d made the connection with the thought experiment.

She spotted movement and a streak of black in the gym behind The Philosopher, and didn’t look to discern what it was. She focused in on his face. Chat needed a distraction so he could sneak closer, and she could do that. “You know we always beat the akuma victims you send after us, Hawk Moth. Can’t you try something else?”

“Hawk Moth isn’t here, Miss Bug,” he spat.

“Uh-huh, sure,” she said. “You’re a super independent contractor or whatever who characterized himself like thirty seconds ago as a weapon - ergo without a will of your own. Not super coherent here, dude.”

He spluttered, an angry flush rising blotchily in his cheeks. “Triumph of the Forms,” he started, and didn’t get to finish whatever he was going to try to do to her because he took a baton to the back of the head.

Chat grinned at her. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Ladybug rolled her eyes. “Get me out of here?”

“Cataclysm,” he said, and pressed the glowing darkness around his hand to the wall of her cell.

The walls fell down in ripples, as if Chat’s magic had reminded them they were imaginary and they were sheepishly creeping away. He swiped the sharp claws of the suit over the zip ties holding her wrists, and Ladybug sprang up. “Thanks.”

“Any time, my Lady.” He bowed floridly as his ring gave its first beep.

She rubbed her wrists. They weren’t sore, precisely, but a visceral reminder that there was nothing holding them anymore was soothing. “Any idea what the object is? I couldn’t get a sense of it.”

He shook his head. “I can go through his pockets while you cast Lucky Charm?”

“Lucky Charm,” she said in lieu of any direct verbal response. A pair of scissors appeared, and she frowned as she caught them. They weren’t any clue what the item would be.

“Aha!” Chat held up a crumpled piece of paper that was heavily tinted the shade of purple they’d come to expect.

“Awesome,” she said, and got her yoyo ready.

Chat ripped it in half, and the butterfly within fled desperately for the window. Ladybug caught it easily, and they cleaned up as usual, the gym melting back to the way it was before.

The philosophy teacher was left doubled-over and confused on the gym floor, clothes only slightly more colorful than they’d been before.

“Uh, good luck with Philosophy Club,” Chat said awkwardly, patting him on the shoulder. “I’m sure it’ll be great.” His ring beeped.

By mutual silent accord, Ladybug and Chat went out the gym windows rather than the doors, landing behind the school. Before he could run off, Ladybug asked, “How’d you get out of your cell? I don’t think I was out long enough for you to have used Cataclysm and then recharged.”

Chat looked down and scuffed his foot along the pavement. “I have a job as a civilian that gives me weird downtime, so I watch youtube tutorials.”

She raised an eyebrow, incredulous and impressed. “And they taught you how to stage a prison break?”

He looked up and grinned at her, looking every inch the mischief spirit he was sometimes compared to. “Not directly, but I figured I should know how to pick locks.” He reached into the pocket of his suit and pulled out a slim case that opened to show strange tools. “You never know what you’ll need to know!”

Ladybug laughed, happy to have such a ridiculous - and handy - partner. She was cut short by the morning bell, and froze. “Oh no -”

“See you on patrol,” Chat said hurriedly, and raced around the corner of the building.


	4. Fortune Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [electronic noises]

“Group presentations are due in one week! You have ten minutes now to discuss your progress, and then I turn you over to Mme. Mendeleiev.” Mme. Bustier smiled and started straightening the folders on her desk, one of which contained the pop quiz they’d completed earlier.

Nino turned around, putting an elbow on the back of his seat. “Marinette, how’s the poster coming?”

“I’ve got everything blocked,” she said. “We just need to print the photos and excerpts we’re using and color it in.”

“My mom has a copy of  _ L’Algérie  _ that we can bring in as another visual aide,” Alya said, and prodded Nino’s forearm with her stylus. It wasn’t actually infringing on her space, but it was there, and made a tempting target. Marinette knew how she felt, especially as Adrien turned around and smiled nervously at them.

“Do you want to finish everything up at my place and run through the presentation? I’m not going to have a whole lot of time the rest of the week, and I’ve got a location shoot this weekend.”

Marinette felt the horrifying rise of heat in her cheeks that meant she was probably blushing. They’d already worked on this project for ages! The four of them had spent hours in the library poring over books by and about Germaine Tillion, but even several months in class and several weeks of group work hadn’t made her substantially less awkward around Adrien. It was verging on humiliating at this point. “Yeah! I’m free totally.” Oh, good, that was almost coherent word order.

“Oh, hey,” Alya said. “Does that mean we can use your dad’s photo printer? Because I found an image of her when she was young that someone retouched to look really nice. It’d be a good counterpoint to the photo when she’s older and I’d like to have both of them look quality.”

Adrien shrugged. “I don’t see why not. He’s out of the country right now.”

Again? Marinette suppressed a frown; he’d been left alone two weeks ago, too. But Adrien would still at least have someone there for him.

“Man, he leaves you alone there a lot. It must be like rattling around in a mausoleum,” Nino said.

Adrien shrugged again, this time visibly uncomfortable. “It’s not like I’m home much.”

Nino frowned. Alya gave him a particularly vicious jab with her stylus. Marinette needed to provide a distraction. “Um - if you don’t mind a detour, we could pick up some snacks from my parents first.”

Adrien smiled at her, relieved, and it was like the sun coming up. “That would be great.”

The class period ended, and they were collectively handed over to Mme. Mendeleiev’s tender mercies.

After school, Adrien texted Gorilla to pick them up at the patisserie and the four of them walked over. Marinette’s dad was in back in the kitchen, probably working on his last batches, but her mom was out front, and Marinette slipped behind the counter to kiss her on the cheek. “Bonjour, Maman. We came to beg you for snacks before we go finish our group project.”

“Of course, dear.” Her mom handed her one of the pastry boxes they kept under the counter and nudged her towards one of the display cases: there was a customer waiting to check out with a baguette.

Marinette loaded up the box with things Alya and Nino and Adrien pointed at, and if she packed twice as many of the things Adrien indicated he liked, well, so what? She gave her mom another kiss on the cheek, ran up to get the posterboard, and then the four of them piled out and into Adrien’s car, waiting at the curb.

Alya gallantly held the door for them, waving them in in order so that Marinette was sandwiched between Adrien and Nino while Alya got into the front seat. Thigh pressed up against Adrien’s and face flaming, Marinette was torn between thanking Alya and throttling her. She tried to distract herself with project stuff. “So, I think it’s really important that she got to write her own history? Like, so much of the time history is pieced together afterwards from letters, and the people actually involved don’t get to frame their own narrative. So I think it’s worth dedicating equal time as well as equal poster space to her activities after the war.”

Alya turned in her seat, eyes narrowed assessingly. “Pull time from the Ravensbruck bit?”

“Not like you’d have to actually cut anything,” Nino teased. “You’re going to end up talking twice as fast as the rest of us anyway and can cram more in.”

They bickered and flirted the rest of the way to Adrien’s. It left Marinette achingly aware of the warmth of Adrien beside her and with nothing else to focus on. Her hands got clammy where she clutched the box, and she could only be glad she’d passed off the posterboard because at least she wouldn’t be leaving visible nervous handprints on something they had to present.

The Agreste mansion, as always, loomed cold and intimidating. Adrien seemed oblivious, though, so the rest of them trooped after him. They set up in Adrien’s bedroom, which underscored upsettingly that it was the only really inhabited space in this mausoleum. The light seemed brighter in there, the air a little easier to breathe, and Marinette didn’t know how Adrien stood being in the rest of the house at all. She thought that it must have been better before his mother disappeared: Gabriel Agreste had to have better taste than to set up this kind of environment on purpose. His designs were never anywhere near so lifeless.

The four of them managed to blaze through their work, even going so far as to give drafted bits of their presentation. Well - Nino’s was drafted. Adrien had a polished version of his that needed very little tweaking, and Alya, having vlogged extensively for several months, was just going to speak extemporaneously from bullet points. Marinette was embarrassed to be the only one with little to show, especially with her proposal to add time to Tillion’s historical documentation of both the war and various war crimes. She had her bullet points, at least. She just needed to figure out what to say, and didn’t trust her ability to speak extemporaneously. She’d probably end up talking about how Ladybug’s interviews were an essential component of reporting on the akuma phenomenon, and that wouldn’t be good for her personal life or her grade.

She promised to run a more comprehensive draft by Alya by Friday, and the four of them managed to wrap up as the sun was setting. Marinette was inclined to stick around, but Adrien was casting almost pointed glances at the darkening sky outside the window, and she had patrol later, so she acquiesced to being shuttled home with Nino and Alya.

-

With the current workload at school, Marinette probably have been exhausted even without akuma attacks and patrols. But grades were important, and putting forth her best effort into school was, as her parents reminded her, her most important job. So it was a rare treat when she managed to set aside a whole day just to work on personal projects that had nothing to do with school or superhero duties. The fact that they’d already prepped for their presentation accounted for most of it. Marinette and Alya had finished working on her part of the presentation near midnight, and now she was free the whole day.

All of Paris seemed happily involved in their own non-destructive chaos, and it seemed like Marinette would actually finish the sundress before summer.

She never paid much attention to reality TV unless her friends were on it, and none of them were really into singing as such, so the first she heard of the idol competition was when the resultant akuma started trending on Twitter. The notification on her phone was the interruption to her sewing that she’d been most dreading.

There was more activity even than usual; apparently people on-scene were communicating even with each other over Twitter, because the akuma victim was stealing voices. Marinette sighed and turned off her iron. She’d finally been making progress on this dress, but saving Paris came first. “Tikki, spots on!”

She climbed out onto the roof, then dropped into the alley. It would be faster to go straight over the roofs, but she didn’t want to make her  point of origin any more obvious than she had to.

She used her yoyo to swing onto a roof where she’d be silhouetted against an innocuous patch of sky and called Chat Noir. “Have you heard?”

“Yeah, lovebug. Ladyblog alert just went out. I’m on my way.”

She smiled at him. “See you there.” Hanging up, she used the yoyo to swing closer.

Rather than screams, Ladybug followed the resounding echo of silence towards the center of the chaos. The streets were just as full as usual, cars and bicycles and busses and pedestrians, but even the cars were somehow muted as she got closer. Traffic was nearly at a standstill. Some people spotted her and pointed frantically.

When she got to what looked like ground zero, the akuma victim was readily recognizable by the sparkling sequined minidress in the exact shade of purple Hawkmoth stamped on everything. Ladybug’s landing on the concrete seemed much louder than it was, and the akuma turned to look at her, smile like a razor on her face. “An opponent worthy of me. But if you turn over your Miraculous, Ladybug, we don’t have to be opponents at all.”

Ladybug swung her yoyo in a lazy circle. “I’m pretty sure I’d rather stay opponents, thanks. Are you going to stop hurting people?”

The akuma’s smile stretched to a bloody-looking snarl. “I’m not  _ hurting _ them. I was a soldier. I know the difference. I’m a singer now. I can be both! Women have always fought. Just because I want to sing about what I did doesn’t mean I should get kicked! And to cut off my broadcast - to cut off my voice. I will not be cut off! Now I have taken control. I’m making them be quiet so they’ll all hear me.”

Chat Noir landed on top of a street lamp, all four limbs somehow tucked neatly in. “And then Hawk Moth will cut off your ‘voice’ and the circle of stupidity will be complete.”

She whirled and threw something at him. He backflipped off the lamppost, but it followed, a cat-seeking missile. Ladybug flung her yoyo towards it, desperate to knock it off course. She hated when her partner took damage, no matter how reversible it was. Too late, too slow: the projectile hit, wrapping around the lower half of Chat’s face. He stayed on his feet, though, and she couldn’t take her eyes from him.

He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Meeting her gaze, he shrugged eloquently. She nodded tightly in return, then returned her gaze to the akuma, who seemed content to gloat a little longer.

“The things I sing ‘aren’t appropriate for broadcast,’ but they’re my  _ truth _ ,” she said vehemently. “No one tries to shut off your interviews with that blogger, so you wouldn’t understand.”

The mention of Alya was like a dash of ice-water down her spine. She didn’t want her best friend, her best friend who’s almost certainly lurking in the vicinity, to be an active target for this woman’s misplaced malice. “No,” she started.

The akuma cut her off. “Shut up! I’m still talking. God, I thought - I don’t know why I thought you’d understand. You’ll have to be quiet, too, so I can sing.”

Ladybug set her jaw. Being able to tell your own story was important, but not like this. Not at the cost of violence, not to the detriment of other people, and especially not at the whim of a supervillain. “Yeah, I’m afraid this concert’s canceled,” she said. “Lucky charm!”

The fight was over quickly, then, even without Chat’s ability to call for a cataclysm.

The victim, once cleansed, looked neither confused nor regretful. Instead, she looked incensed, and punched the pavement.

Ladybug hesitated - she was angry, and uninclined to be charitable, but still. “If you talk to Alya, you can tell her about how you ended up akumatized. I think she’d like to have your story for the Ladyblog.”

The woman met her eyes, and volatile emotion still brimmed over. “I don’t want your pity.”

“And you don’t have it,” she said coolly, eyes still drifting to where Chat was helping get disoriented civilians moving again. “But your story might be useful for others, so tell it. Your silence doesn’t serve any purpose. Giving other people some idea of what triggered it, what it feels like, might.”


End file.
